Sinn Fein on course for police move

Sinn Fein remained on course for a historic move this month to endorse support for the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI).

In a seismic shift, the 56-strong national executive voted in favour of holding an extraordinary party conference in Dublin on January 28.

If the motion to back the PSNI is passed Sinn Fein, led by its president Gerry Adams, will have opened the door for power sharing in Stormont.

Earlier, Unionists said they were not going to throw Sinn Fein a lifeline in the current stand-off over support for policing.

A senior MP in the Rev Ian Paisley's Democratic Unionist Party, the Rev William McCrea, said republicans needed to deliver.

"The DUP will not hold out any lifeline or lifeboat to help Gerry Adams out of the sinking boat in the stormy waters that he now finds himself in," the South Antrim MP said.

"If they are looking to us to give them comfort on the issue of devolved government by March 26 and the devolution of policing and justice in 2008, they are whistling in the wind.

"As far as unionism is concerned words are not enough. There has to be action. There has to be delivery - not words, they are not plausible."

On December 29 last year Sinn Fein's national executive took the potentially historic step of announcing a special conference this month. However, the party leadership said that move was based on a positive response from the DUP to the move.

Prime Minister Tony Blair tried to resolve the situation by setting out his view of what was required from Sinn Fein and the DUP if the issues of policing and power sharing were to be resolved this year under the St Andrews Agreement forged last October.